Ontological convictions and epistemological obstacles in Bolzano's elementary geometry (Q5948249): Difference between revisions

Using \textit{G. Bachelard}'s concept of epistemological obstacles the author intends to explain the fact that \textit{B. Bolzano}, although being a contemporary of the founders of non-Euclidean geometries, and although writing on the foundations of geometry, continued to attempt to prove the parallel postulate. She sees the reason in Bolzano's epistemological and ontological conviction that geometry is the purely conceptual science of space dealing, as a science, with truths in themselves being objectively existent independently of our consciousness. This conviction made him blind for the new directions in developing non-Euclidean geometries, and for the idea that many different geometries might exist. This idea ``violates his belief in the existence of an objective natural order'' (p.\ 416), a belief which produced wrong answers when applied outside the context it originally arose (the author does not consider the observation, however, that even today positions maintaining the primacy of Euclidean geometry are held in the philosophy of mathematics). The paper concludes with consequences for didactics. The author suggests to identify ontological convictions even if they are not articulated.